Rice and Beans, Beans and Rice or The Journey to Managing Money Succesfully

Posted on June 8, 2015

Talking about money is not always easy isn’t it? Plus it’s not something you talk with everybody, I guess that’s why it has taken me so long to write this here, but I find it so helpful when I read other people’s true experiences and that’s why I want to share ours with you. This post will be a little different, more story and less photos.

Since managing money is not something they teach us in school, when you grow up you’re kind of just following what your family used to do or what society does and many times it doesn’t lead to the best place in life. That was happening to us, we were always living paycheck to paycheck and it was getting even harder after I started being an entrepreneur/freelance because I get payed in different amounts and at different times in the month. Plus it has been a lot less than what it was when I had a real corporate job.

Believe me we weren’t content with this feeling of being broke and most importantly the feeling of not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel soon, not picturing when we were going to be able to live differently. So we were always looking for ways to improve, like reading books and going to conferences. We went to a 3 day conference with T. Harv Eker’s, the Millionaire Mind; that was great and it helped us for a while until it didn’t and we fell off the wagon; then we read Rich Dad Poor Dad and we bought an online coaching deal, long story short we wasted money there, it didn’t help us.

We stopped looking for a while… One day my sister found out about Dave Ramsey, she read one of his books and started following his steps to manage money, he calls it Financial Peace. She gave us Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace Class as a gift. It’s a class you have to go to in real life every week (not online) for about 2 months and it works best if you go with your significant other or a friend that can help you keep accountable for.

Derek and I went to the class religiously every week. It was not easy because he is a very radical guy with radical ideas that are very different from others. To start with, he doesn’t believe in any kind of debt, no credit cards, no loans, nothing except a 15 year mortgage (with some conditions). We took our credit cards and cut them with scissors in class.

The interesting part is that he is very religious (Christian) and we are not, and the religion does come out in many teachings but that didn’t scare us at all, at the end of the day we respect any person’s believes and he is not preaching, we do believe in the system he teaches, specially because this system does allow us to see a light soon, to see us living differently!

Some of Dave Ramsey’s teachings for managing money that we love:

No debt. We are paying off all of our debt (including student loans), we don’t use credit cards at all, we use cash or debit.

Pay your debt Snowball style. We make a huge payment to the smallest debt and the other debts are minimum payments until the first one gets paid off and so on. This allows us to see the light!

Have an emergency fund. Because it WILL rain some day! And having it gives us such peace of mind!

Cutting off when possible. Only paying for what we need at the moment, no cable, use coupons. I plan the meals every week so we can save the most on grocery shopping and eat a lot of rice and beans (hence the title of this post!).

Keep a budget ALL THE TIME. We learned that every dollar has a purpose so the money is doing work for you, you are not letting it just sit there and wonder! Nothing comes up by surprise, we are now prepared for Christmas for birthday parties and more because we plan it in the budget. We do budget meetings constantly, we both know what’s going on with the budget at all times, we are both responsible for it.

Live like no one else to later live like no one else. This means that right now we are making lots of sacrifices (saving money, not going out to restaurants, no big vacations, shopping the necessary) because later we are going to be able to do all those things and more!

My most favorite part that has helped us so much in this process is having and following a budget. Because we are a very techie couple we love using this software: YNAB. It makes such a difference to know you have allotted X amount of money for the groceries or for the kid’s summer camp and it will be there no matter what. And even if your income is so inconsistent like mine!

Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace class teaches you to follow baby steps to get Financial Peace, we are only on Baby Step 2 which is paying off our debt, it can take a while depending on your debt and income but his financial training goes all the way to saving for your kid’s college, investing, buying a house, paying it off, building wealth, retirement and giving.

One of the BEST parts we love about this is that it will extend to the kids. Because now that we are learning how to manage our money we are teaching the kids the same and yes you can start them very young!

Since we took the class Dave Ramsey and his daughter Rachel Cruise published a book calledSmart Money, Smart Kids and they even have a class based on it. We read the book and love it too. We started teaching Adrian about money a while back as well and of course, I will talk about this experience in another post because now we are starting to teach Mayita too!

I think that for many marriages, money is a big issue and it’s something we don’t talk about with anybody else, our marriage was not really in trouble because of money but it could have gotten there if we didn’t look for a way to solve the problem that kept growing.

If you feel like it, comment with a little of your experience with money or what you would like to get better at, let’s talk!

I wish you financial peace and even if you only learn one of the many things Dave Ramsey teaches it will help!

Disclosure: This is NOT a sponsored post, I really love Dave Ramsey’s system and I want to share the love, I think it’s important for all families to have financial peace! If you want to get to know him, and get motivated, visit him on the site or start by listening to his radio show 🙂 As always, all opinions, ideas, and stories are 100% my own.